Precision bombing of Gaddafi forces by coalition planes has weakened their grip on the eastern town of Ajdabiya but they continue to terrorise the population, rebels and fleeing residents said today.

"They have only two gates (entry roads)" under their control, said Nasser Hagagi, one of around 200 rebels manning a checkpoint 15 kilometers from Ajdabiya, outside the range of Gaddafi's tanks.

Two other access points to the city were free, but the situation was still too dangerous for a rebel advance, he told reporters.

Hagagi said he was in Ajdabiya overnight and heard the coalition bombing targets for three hours, but he did not know what was hit.

Ajdabiya residents who escaped afterwards via a desert road today told AFP life was dire in their besieged city, with Gaddafi troops and mercenaries brutalising the population and food and water stocks depleted.

They, too, could not say exactly what the coalition bombs had struck. It was too perilous for journalists to attempt enter the city to verify the situation within.

In London, Britain's Defence Secretary Liam Fox said today that British Tornado jets had launched missiles overnight at Libyan armoured vehicles which were threatening civilians in Ajdabiya.

"The Tornado aircraft launched a number of guided Brimstone missiles at Libyan armoured vehicles which were threatening the civilian population of Ajdabiya."

Fathia Meftah Ayad, a woman who managed to escape into the desert in a car with members of her family, told AFP Gaddafi fighters were "killing anybody aged over 10" they saw in the street, and shooting at anybody trying to flee the city.

She said four of her relatives, including a young nephew who had run out in a desperate search for bread, had been shot dead last week. Yesterday, she said, nine neighbors were shot dead as they ran along one street.

"There is no one in the streets. It is a ghost town," she said.

Her son, Majed Abdel Karim, added that "we had to leave because we had no water or food" after holing up for four days in their home.

They said pro-regime forces were using multiple rocket launchers to bring down buildings.

There were conflicting reports about whether residents were using the city's Muhamed Garief Hospital for shelter.

Abdel Karim said he believed "400 families" were huddling there, thinking it the only place relatively safe from Gaddafi and coalition attacks.

But another Ajdabiya resident who fled by the same desert route, Walid Jibril, 30, said he had seen the hospital and there were no refugees sheltering inside.

Hagagi, the Libyan fighter at the checkpoint, said he had returned from Germany, where he lived and had obtained German nationality, four days ago to help the rebellion.

"It won't be easy - Gaddafi is doing everything he can to stay," he said.

He, too, said the streets of Ajdabiya were empty. The Gaddafi forces, he said, "were stuck" in the city because of fear of coalition bombardment if they retreated.

A rebel army spokesman, air force general Ahmed Omar Bani, told reporters in Benghazi yesterday that some Gaddafi loyalists in Ajdabiya have asked to surrender.

"We are trying to negotiate with these people in Ajdabiya because we are almost sure that they have lost contact with the headquarters," Bani said.

Residents in Benghazi, the rebel stronghold, were helping the anti-regime fighters any way they could, notably donating food and places to sleep.

Ahmed Barasi, a 35-year-old engineer in a Toyota pick-up loaded with food, said 2,000 families from Ajdabiya had relocated to a nearby town to wait out a resolution to the conflict.

He predicted that, eventually, Gaddafi's regime "will collapse for sure."